O. S. Nock

Oswald Stevens Nock (21 January 1905 – 29 September 1994), nicknamed Ossie, was a British railway signal engineer and senior manager at the Westinghouse company; he is well known for his prodigious output of popularist publications on railway subjects, including over 100 books, as well as a large number of more technical works on locomotive performance.

In his early writing career Nock also had published photographic articles on landscapes and regions, published by non-railway publications.[3][4] A commission for The Star newspaper enabled him to ride on the footplate of a LMS express locomotive in 1934, subsequently he regularly submitted information on locomotive performance to The Railway Magazine.[6]

Nock married Olivia Hattie née Ravenall (1913/4 - 1987) in 1937.[7] By 1939 Nock was successful as a both a popular and technical railway author - he received a commission by The Engineer at the beginning of the Second World War to produce a series of articles on railway signalling, and on locomotive performance under wartime conditions.[7]

After World War II Nock rose through the Westinghouse organisation to become chief brake draughtsman (1945), four years later chief draughtsman; during the British Rail modernisation plan (1955) Nock managed the expansion of the company's drawing office, and in 1957 became the company's chief mechanical engineer.[8] Nock's first published book was Locomotives of Sir Nigel Gresley published 1945, and based on an earlier series of ten articles in The Railway Magazine;[5] he became a regular author of publishers David and Charles and Ian Allan in the post war boom, publishing on average two books per year whilst working at Westinghouse.[9] In 1959 he took over the writing of the "British locomotive practice and performance" reports for The Railway Magazine from Cecil J. Allen, publishing 264 articles between then and 1980.[6]

In 1967 he was a passenger on a train involved in a derailment near Didcot in which one person was killed. The carriage where he was sitting overturned, but he escaped without injury, and later wrote of his experience in his book Historic Railway Disasters. He had previously seen the aftermath of another fatal railway accident at Reading in 1914 as a schoolboy.[10]

In 1969 Nock became president of the Institution of Railway Signal Engineers (IRSE).[11] After retiring in 1970 his output rose to five books per year, including a three volume work on 20th century British locomotives, and eight volumes on the railways of regions of the work.[5]

Nock authored more than 140 books and 1000 magazine articles, although some of the work represented duplication from his own oeuvre,[16] as well as containing repetition or padding within the text.[17] Much of his work showed a bias towards locomotive performance issues;[18] his most authoritative work was on that subject and on signalling.[16] As a writer his output is considered accessible, uncontroversial, and empathic to the subject he wrote upon,[18] and rich in personal anecdotes,[19][20] though his historical work and research was weak.[19]

His better writing has been highly praised:

... it becomes clear how a good a writer he was – clear, straightforward sentences coupled with the ability to explain technical matters in simple terms.

^ abJones 2012, quote "He rarely noted sources, and tended to work on thin foundations, making maximum use of personal anecdotes [...] The few works which were compiled by him as continuations of earlier works are seldom as thorough as their predecessors"

^Vanns 2004, para.8 quote: "If [his books] had faults—repetition and a bias towards locomotive performance [..] arose because the author was an enthusiast who infused all his texts with his own experience. His work was always accessible and engaging."